Nokia

Nokia’s first-quarter earnings report sent the stock tumbling on Thursday morning, but Windows Phone fans still got some good news. According to a report from The Financial Times, Nokia is developing at least three new high-end smartphones that will launch later this year and will represent Nokia’s latest effort to “revitalize” its handset business. The first is a Windows Phone phablet, which FT reports will have a display measuring between 5- and 6-inches diagonally. In addition, the report claims Nokia plans to launch a Lumia handset with a 40-megapixel PureView camera as well as a “more advanced” version of the Lumia 920. No other details or launch timing were noted in the report.

The first mobile phone call was placed 40 years ago. So on Wednesday, we were treated to several “History of the Mobile Phone” articles by American journalists, most of them orgies of chauvinism and astonishing nationalistic bias. One pure product of this navel-gazing genre is the Wired magazine piece called “The 12 Cellphones That Changed Our World Forever.” In the revisionist history of the mobile phone, the actual nature of the device is obscured completely. More →

Does the world really need another “phablet?” Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean it would be a bad idea for Nokia (NOK) to release an oversized smartphone of its own. In an interview with Bloomberg, IDC analyst Francisco Jeronimo says that big-screen devices are “a trend that can’t be missed” because “people are using smartphones in different ways now, consuming media by streaming over faster mobile networks.” CCS Insight research director Ben Wood similarly thinks that “phablets” are an important trend and tells Bloomberg that “Nokia needs to make sure they don’t miss the boat” by not building one of their own. More →